The Thursday, Dec. 17, issue of the Sun Journal carried tandem columns by Rich Lowry and Cal Thomas on the issue of climate change. Lowry dismissed the Paris accord while Thomas dismissed the phenomenon entirely.

How does Thomas explain the gradually rising high-tide mark in Maine, the northward migration of lobsters in search of cooler water and the shrinking Arctic ice pack?

The Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration all discuss global warming on their websites.

Perhaps conservatives in Congress should demand that those U.S. government agencies, which have the temerity to take the situation seriously, be defunded or eliminated.

This is not a liberal versus conservative issue. The efforts in Paris, as hopeful and non-binding as they were, went further than the past measures in Kyoto and Copenhagen.

Perhaps the Unites States could really prove itself to be exceptional by embracing the Paris agreements and showing leadership in preserving the planet as we know it.

Edward Walworth, Lewiston